A holiday meal for Petaluma’s hungriest

Local nonprofits need help feeding the many Petaluma residents forced to skip meals.|

For many, last week’s Thanksgiving celebration marked the beginning of a holiday season that includes several feasts and an abundance of delicious food. But a growing population of Sonoma County residents are forced to skip meals and may end up hungry this winter.

According to the county’s hunger index, 70,000 at-risk Sonoma County households, including many in Petaluma, missed nearly 34 million of the 82 million meals needed in 2015. These are not necessarily homeless individuals. The county human services department tracks low-income families and seniors that simply can’t afford to buy groceries to have three meals per day.

“The numbers are kind of staggering for Sonoma County,” said Elece Hempel, executive director of Petaluma People Services Center, which has several programs to feed Petaluma residents. “We know there is this hidden population that are just hungry. We see them in a lot of different ways.”

Each day, Petaluma seniors in need of a hot meal gather at the Petaluma Senior Center at 211 Novak Dr. for the Senior Cafe lunch program. For those less mobile, PPSC offers a Meals on Wheels program that delivers food to residents’ homes.

The organization also helps low-income residents apply for state food assistance through the CalFresh program, which can now be used at Petaluma farmers markets. And PPSC’s food pantry and Bounty Farm provide healthy, locally grown food, while the organization’s Bounty Hunters gleans some 400,000 pounds of food that would otherwise go to waste.

Hempel said that many Petaluma residents struggle with the rising cost of living and prioritize paying rent over putting food on the table. She said that, a decade ago, the Meals on Wheels program was delivering 60 meals per day. Now that number is 200.

“The numbers continue to grow,” she said. “The dollars to feed these individuals have not increased.”

The hunger index, published by a coalition of local food assistance providers and community food security organizations, measures progress toward meeting the basic food needs of all residents beyond the assistance provided by community and government programs. Basic food needs are defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as three healthy meals each day.

The index shows that the total of at-risk households with annual incomes of less than $50,000 has remained steady over the last few years. With little salary growth, plus inflation and rising food costs, household food budgets and food assistance dollars don’t stretch far enough to cover all the needed meals, the report found.

Since the recession, incomes have improved slightly and brought some families out of the lowest economic strata, though not enough to lift them out of what has become known as “food insecurity,” said George Malachowski, program development manager for the Sonoma County Human Services Department.

“The recovery for those families at the bottom of the economy is relatively the same,” said Malachowski. “For those families, it means they’re not making a lot more money and the food assistance is not increasing so that missing meal gap that the hunger index shows is still too high.”

The index is derived by estimating how much it costs to purchase a healthy meal, based on the monthly USDA food guide, which is about $2.34 a meal per person. For a family of four, at three meals a day, 365 days a year, the annual food cost is about $10,000, Malachowski said.

To determine the number of missed meals, the county estimates how much households with annual incomes of $50,000 or less are actually spending on food. Malachowski said families with annual incomes of less than $50,000 are the most likely to skip meals.

“We see incomes going up, but we’re not seeing people get out of that $50,000 range,” he said.

Karen Fies, director of the county human services department, said a fifth of the county’s population purchases food with CalFresh, or food stamps.

“CalFresh helped local, at-risk families buy 31 percent of the needed meals in 2015,” she said. “Government funding can’t meet 100 percent of our county’s basic food needs - it takes help from everyone in the community to ensure no one goes hungry.”

Hempel said that volunteers and money are greatly needed, especially in the winter months when heating costs increase and low-income residents have greater health care costs. Her organization’s 1,000 Bowls fundraiser, an annual event the last week of November, seeks to auction hand-glazed pottery to feed seniors - 1,000 bowls at around $10 each can feed 161 senior for a week.

Hempel said that feeding programs often act as homeless prevention, especially in a region with some of the highest housing prices in the state.

“If someone can access food and not have to buy it, they can pay for rent,” she said. “It’s always a little shocking to see neighbors standing in line for food.”

(Press Democrat Staff Writer Martin Espinoza contributed to this report. Contact Matt Brown at matt.brown@arguscourier.com.)

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:
  • This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
  • No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
  • No disinformation about current events.
  • We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.